Shadow Valley

Steven Barnes’s Great Sky Woman unveiled the world of a prehistoric people in the shadow of modern-day Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, in Shadow Valley, the astounding sequel, we follow the Ibandi people’s odyssey through a land where everything has changed—a land from whose ashes will grow the roots of civilization and the enduring truths of love, family, forgiveness, and faith. After the catastrophic eruption of Father Mountain, the Ibandi are divided, desperate, and afraid. Most have followed the only person in whom they still believe: young Sky Woman, who was on the great mountain when it exploded and who, along with Frog Hopping, returned to tell the tale. Nurtured by an elder whose searing visions have left her blind, Sky Woman nonetheless doubts her own visionary powers as she follows a path she can hardly discern—across savannah and parched plains—to find a valley of plenty for a people on the brink of collapse. But in fact, Sky Woman and Frog were not the only survivors of the mountain’s explosion. Another man has emerged from the destruction, vengeance pulsing in his veins, to lead a separate group of Ibandi into a vicious and reckless act of war. Soon these two strands of survivors will meet, through chance, desperation, and sheer willpower. In a world in which every moment is lived on the edge between life and death, where animal and human predators can strike in an instant, where the gods themselves seem lost, and dreams entwine with reality, a people’s destiny rushes toward them. The Ibandi must make a last, violent stand against complete destruction. In this hypnotic, thrilling, and beautiful novel, Steven Barnes explores relationships between friends and lovers, leaders and followers, strangers and allies. At once visceral and soaringly insightful, Shadow Valley is about who we are as human beings today as seen through the wondrous prism of our distant past.

Shadow Valley takes you into the fictional but reality-based world of TransChip Technologies to experience life in Silicon Valley in the early 1970s when it was beginning to emerge as the rapid-beating heart of the technology industry. Meet the characters, hear their stories, and learn how massive wealth was created for a few and un-unionizable workplaces were created for the workers.

Somewhere in the Shadow Valley lies a secret that could forever change the frontier. Only a posse of gunmen with special abilities can defend that secret from a tribe of ghostly warriors, an advancing army led by a deranged colonel, and the perils of the valleys itself. Nominated for the Eisner award for Best Digital Comic in 2010, and for the Harvey Award for Best Online Comics Work in 2011, Dark Horse now collects the supernatural web comic into a 200+ page graphic novel.

Winner of six Spur Awards, Shirreffs has been applauded for his Westerns that are written by the hand of a master! (New York Times). Here is double Western action, as a man goes looking for the low-life who gunned down his brother, and a Major takes on Apaches armed with new Henry rifles.